4,925

Last night I finished reading No Man's Land: 1918—The Last Year of the Great War by John Toland. Published in 1980, its prologue starts on New Year's Day. The Allied forces waited feverishly for American troops to arrive, after President Woodrow Wilson declared war in April 1917. General John Pershing promised that at least 5,000,000 US troops would arrive, "a combat force greater by one quarter than the entire Allied armies on the Western Front, where the war would eventually be won or lost."

The Americans finally arrived in great numbers. Toland's book vividly shows Yank enthusiasm meeting the insanity of war in Europe. The numbers are stunning, rivaling the worst days of the Civil War. Toland tells of one battle in July 1918:

The remains of the battalion reached their starting place, the Forest of Retz. Of the 726 men who had gone into battle, 146 came out. "They just melted away," Denig recalled. Throughout Harbord's 2nd Division it was the same story. In forty-eight hours they had suffered 4,925 casualties.

That's one part of one battle. 

Toland draws a sharp contrast between the exhausted armies of Europe and the incoming Yanks. His descriptions of American military behavior caught my attention because of the high, even crazed, enthusiasm for fighting. The Germans picked up on this immediately, a theme repeated through the book as Germans encountered Americans:

The carnage was even worse on the other side of the river, where Allied artillery throughout the day had blasted the reserve units. "Never had I seen so many dead," wrote Lieutenant Hesse, "never contemplated a spectacle of war so frightful as on the northern slopes of the Marne. On the southern side the Americans in a hand-to-hand fight had completely wiped out two of our companies. Hidden in the wheat in a semicircle, they had let our men advance, then had annihilated them with a fire at thirty or forty feet away. This enemy had a coolness, one must acknowledge, but he also gave proof that day of a bestial brutality. 'The Americans are killing everyone!' Such was the terrifying word that spread through all our ranks on the 15th of July."

Toland's vignettes give glimpses of individuals, somber and quirky. Some historical background on this reference would have been useful: "Others were hit, and Lieutenant John Overton shouted to a friend to send his Skull and Cross Bones pin to his mother if he were killed." That must refer to the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale. 

Other stories relate to the doughboys' quest for memorabilia to take home to show the folks. Toland makes several references to this habit:

The prisoners told Gibbons that the British were in the war because they hated Germans; France because the battling was in their country; the Yanks only to collect souvenirs.

Gibbons stopped one of these collectors bound for the rear. He was one of the shortest men he had ever seen in U.S. uniform and he was herding two huge prisoners who towered above him. A white bandage ran around his forehead and there were blood-stained strips of cotton gauze on cheek and neck. He carried a huge chunk of German black bread; danging from his right hip were five holsters containing Lugers. Suspect from his right shoulder by straps to his left hip were six pairs of expensive field glasses. His filthy face was wreathed in a remarkable smile.

The slaughter continued far past the point where the Germans knew they would lose, in the summer of 1918. Armies had the ammunition and the orders, and they used both until the very last minute of combat. On that last day, November 11, 1918:

Along most of the Western Front there was a miserable drizzle. Georg Bucher, who had fought since 1914, was awaiting another American attack. The Yanks were as full of fight as crazed animals and didn't seem to know the war was about over.

The book hints at other sides of the American character and society.  A photo shows Eugene Bullard, the Black Swallow of Death," who fought for the French and served as a fighter pilot for the Lafayette Flying Corp. "When the U.S. entered the war, all American pilots were transferred to the U.S. Air Service with an advancement in rank as commissioned officers—all, this is except Bullard, a recipient of the Croix de Guerre, who was grounded."

Toland ends the book on a forboding note; in retrospect, how could he do other? An injured Adolph Hitler vows to devote his life to politics; Japanese leaders hope to gain German holdings in the Pacific, such as the Marshalls and the Marianas as "a formidable defense against any future danger from American warships based in Hawaii."

The War to End All Wars simply set the stage for the next round of global conflict.

The United States suffered 53,402 deaths from combat and missing in action in World War I and 116,402 total military deaths from all causes.

The Law of Unwanted Attraction

There’s something about me that draws people who want to talk to me. Call it the Law of Unwanted Attraction. They can’t wait to tell me their obsessions and grudges and insights. Whether I respond doesn’t matter so much as that I hear them. They don’t realize that, even though I may look like a therapist—I’m not. But they see me that way.

(A video version of this essay can be found here.)

These encounters typically happen on public transit or places where I can’t easily get away. The topics range from scary to engaging. Usually I’ll just listen because the world is full of lonely people, and if somebody wants to connect for 30 minutes on the train, I’m up for that. You never know where a chat will go, or what somebody’s needs are. Including my needs. Sometimes we even exchange business cards.

But for ominous, nothing tops what once happened on Metro-North. I was sitting in those facing seats with two women from Japan with a lot of shopping bags. A man got on and offered to move the bags. They didn’t understand and he finally growled, “Fine, I’ll stand in the vestibule.” But they made space and he sat down, knee to knee with me.

He was late 40s, casually dressed, not carrying anything. Unshaven, looked very tightly wound. First he started in on Metro-North. “After the war Germany and Japan got all the best technology and here we are on Metro-North, using technology from the 1840s.”

I kept a neutral tone and said, “Well, the Germans and the Japanese had to pay a pretty high price to get that technology.” 

He shot back we could have new infrastructure if we hadn’t spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. He was primed to blow like Mount Saint Helens.

Then he grumbled about the 2008 recession. His house had tanked in value and hadn’t come back. He said, “Nobody wants to move to Westchester County because the schools are becoming too ‘diverse,” although he used cruder language to make that point. As a result, working stiffs like him need to send their kids to private schools. 

I really pulled back at this point and he said in an aggrieved tone, “Well, I see you just want to read your book.” He’d be quiet for a station or two and then he’d start again. I didn’t answer anything about who I was, where I lived, what I do for a living. My great fear was we’d both get off at the Katonah station and then our cars would be parked side by side, and he’d harangue me all the way to the parking lot. But he exited at White Plains and I didn’t have to call 911 on him. 

Then there was the time I was on a tour bus in Israel, again reading, when a man across the aisle asks me what time it was, an obvious opening conversational gambit. I told him and he was off and running. He was from Italy and had moved to Australia, and now was visiting Israel. He was an evangelical Christian, and ranted about the sign of the beast and the Apocalypse, the whole Book of Revelations shpiel. Clearly being in the Holy Land was letting the bats out of his belfry, a possible case of the Jerusalem Syndrome. 

Then he asked, “So, sir, what religion are you?”

I wasn’t gonna go there. I told him, “I don’t want to talk about my religion, and I’m going to get back to reading my book.” So that was that.

Sometimes, however, a conversation catches my attention. I’m empathetic and I’ll think, let’s see what connects. You talk to me, I’ll talk to you. My favorites? When men (always men) notice the camera I often carry with me, my trusty Sony A5000, and ask me about it. Bingo! Because I love to talk about cameras and creativity.

Once at my gym I noticed a man working out, a big guy, had a denim jacket on, covered  with motorcycle club patches. Later I saw him again the steam room (no jacket this time), usually a place of total silence among guys. He started talking. He’d been a freelance reporter in the '80s and '90s in New York when I was also a reporter for business magazines. He told me about covering the Yankees and being in the press box. The team always laid out a buffet for the reporters. As a former 
reporter myself, I know how we members of the press fall onto the buffet like starving wolves. Anyway, beloved Yankee broadcaster Phil Rizzuto would come in and the reporters would always wave him through to the head of the line. “Hi Phil, go on through, you don't have to wait.” That charmed me as a wonderfully human gesture of respect.

But then Biker Dude said, “There was this really creepy real estate guy, Trump, and he would come in and push everybody out of the way and go to the head of the line. He wanted to get the food without waiting and this really bothered everybody. He was just a creepy, creepy, creepy guy. I did articles about him and he never liked them.”

This all interested me and I hoped we’d see each other again to talk shop about journalism and politics. I’d open up about the time I went to a Jews for Giuliani fundraiser in 2008, which had THE best kosher sushi. Anyway, I was eager to learn more about his interactions with President Trump, I just hoped he wouldn’t talk about Trump and the Apocalypse at the same time.